Systems versus chaos and chaos versus structures: from USA to Mexico and from Mexico to the USA. This was my 3rd crossing of the Tijuana border: the first breath of air across always remarkably exhilarating.

Borders seem to be impregnated with the same energy pervading you with sensations of excitement and anxiety that the Tijuana double reinforced fences accentuate but only barely contain.

In Tijuana, the fence cuts are mended by the people zig-zagging across and stitching the land back together, from a straight symmetrical ‘uneven’ blade chop, to an organic more ‘even’ seamed line.

The all surrounding natural and urban landscape seems to be defined by hills, canyons, paseos, corridors and pasajos and by a never ending fence that merges into the horizon dissolving the ocean, breaking up the sky.

To me, that fence marks off separation on one side, alienation on the other. Is that why once inside the USA border one officially becomes an alien? Separation can be bridged, but what about the alienation?

And no matter how exhausted and polluted, the air across tastes of sweet clay scented by the illusion of freedom. To breathe in across the fence is to inhale the sensation of hope that briefly shivers inside the lungs down into the guts and by the time you exhale it’s become intoxicated with the realization of the facts: “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmqgqq1Pfwo&feature=youtu.be”(1)

In few instants, blurry excited eyes zoom into focus sneaking right back into the world we have left behind, the world that we create.

In Tijuana the river has dried out of water and is being flooded by people who carve into their land to create a clay sculpture of life. A living artwork, a work in process signed everyday by the experiences of their authors.

And the air? The air is contaminated by the fascination for progress.

In Tijuana the aerial tension of illegal cable webs seems to resist the “imposition of western modernity”(2) strangling power and weeding above the fences. Yet like everybody else is being swallowed by “the forces of neo-colonialism exploitation” (3).

Air, the symbol for freedom and life: a necessity. And yet air is only secondary to the everyday survival struggle of poverty, race and justice of crossing borders. But is air not an integrant part tightly interwoven with those very same social justice matters?

Who dared defy the freedom of air; divide the ocean and slice into the landscape of natural beauty and people? Who dares invading the organic nature of life with their systems of fence and structures?

Who put that fence there? Who keeps reminding people of their legality?

Status? One step inside the line you are an emigrant, the next step outside you turn into an immigrant. Another step in the wrong direction and you are deported.

Either ways, you are a migrant, just like birds, if you were not to have to carry a ‘valid’ passport through your migratory journeys.

But if you happen to be an Anglo-Saxon it’s not too bad. Every time you cross you are an invested jetsetter or a global commuter and don’t even have to think, feel nor worry about the border at all, you can just ignore it and keep going right to your final destination.

I would like to officially thank you: Lili Bernard, Ale McGrew and Tracy Johnsons for participating and supporting this project by contributing with the collection of plastic bags.

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THE STATEMENT

EDITED AND POLISHED Camino Verde’s Canal-Clean-Up

“Chi ha tempo non aspetti tempo” Those who have time, do not wait for time, my stepfather Rinaldo used to teach me. That is until the recession hit the world, his country, his business, his family, his health and his credo too.

His story: that of many italian“self-made-men” that resurged out of the ashes of World War II.

His pedagogy and “certified” theory of achievement and production of success accelerated onto the new generations all the way into the cyber universe, where Chaplin’s “Modern Times” machines have been replaced by the Internet. And it is in the internet’s over populated abysses these words will be roaming in.

Time, production and humanity, what do they have to do with art? All three are men’s constructions that can be destructive. What happens to humanity when time and production are imposed upon people or even countries? How does it effect people choices? We need time to choose, time to be creative, to build social relations to nourish one another, time is vital. But time is what we were short of during this research project on public practice, which has its focus on creative social relations.

Emergency is the mode I resorted to work into. Emergency and urgency, definitely symptoms of our era that our crammed lives suffer from.

Is it the emergency of success, or is it the imposition of the idea of success or is it the success that we imposed on one another that makes us westerner fret so much?

And don’t get me wrong, I love Rinaldo, really a great deal, it’s just that like every child I have the duty to rebel against the imposition of a rule whose vulnerability every child can easily see through, and so is the rest of the world too now. But how to blame Rinaldo when the imposition of time and of success are concepts that have been perpetuated by history and root and rot in the cradle of western civilization?

No, panic not, because in the end, like every child, I too, learned my lesson well, so, I did not waste my time during this project, but instead tried “to make the most” to learn from it. Learning, that’s what it is all about, in the end. But will we ever be able to truly apply all that learning to the benefit of our humanity? In the meantime, while hoping that it will happen, I am sharing the observations and thoughts that my project of Camino Verde’s Canal Clean-up contributed to forge. This is my statement:

Like the rest of the world, Camino Verde too is facing the problem of how rubbish is contaminating its environment and the negative repercussions this is causing to the life of the local community.

Only part of a greater globalized scheme, the pollution of Camino Verde’s canal has roots in western life-style. Economic and political power-forces lead progress towards a commodified world. Just like western lifestyles, Camino Verde’s canal too is trapped into a structure that prioritizes dehumanizing values rather than caring progressive ones. The neglect of the environment is just one of many imminent symptoms of social injustice that the future of Camino Verde is facing.

How do we dispose of the leftovers of a global society that thrives on consumerism? This shared struggle seems to be better concealed in some places than others in the attempt to make the problem invisible at people’s expenses.

Camino Verde’s Canal-Clean-Up is a crossing that meets at a cultural and human exchange of shared values. It is a joint effort of care and a symbolic act that aims at spreading civic awareness on the importance of local environmental social justice.

To me, the rubbish polluting Camino Verde’s canal is an imported “alien” that is invading the spirit of most of our communities and eventually flows into the mainstream of our precious ecosystem of nature, cultures and human values.

We, people of different beliefs, ideas, backgrounds, and cultures, will met at the Desarrollo Community Center and started walking up the canal to La Casa De Las Ideas. These two main community landmarks of Camino Verde provided us with our reference points.

The Canal-Clean-Up is for me a humbling powerful act. To walk and to clean together with our humble tools: gloves and bags collecting the rubbish that we encountered on our journey inside the canal.

Our gathering and collection was celebrated into a final artwork that I assembled together, again in a simple way, with Hector Garcia Esqueda. Hector is a member of the community as well as an activist and a shaman.

Our bags filled with plastic rubbish were piled up on the Desarrollo Community Center’s courtyard and tied with rope to form a temporary sculpture.

The scope of the artwork was to create an image that manifested a visible message hoping to reach out to include the rest of the community of Camino Verde and furthermore echo out of their neighbourhood across the world’s neighbours.

This temporary artwork was intended as a creative celebration of the clean up and invites to reflection and discussion on how we can affect each other communities. I like to think of it as a visual question mark: an aesthetic sign that punctuates the end of a question.

All along, the Canal-Clean-up participants were invited to document each other via two disposable cameras that this time were kept and looked after in the form of artefacts.

Another important parallel outcome to this project was the video documentation of the Canal-Clean-Up event by Jocelyn Jaime Mejia. Together with the participants’ photos, and Apolonio Rodriguez’s video work, Jocelyn’s film was featured in the exposition at the 18th Street Art gallery in Santa Monica, USA. Bits of the canal’s rubbish collection – now deported to their native place of origin – were also be part of the show.

EDITED AND POLISHED on the other side of the line

The title of this installation: Edited and Polished refers to the prevailing agenda of institutions to omit “reality” but embellish facts in an insincere manipulative manner that ultimately is exploitative and not always to the advantage to the social public but rather to the detriment of the greater. The terms Edited and Polished also lend themselves as ironic pointers towards our impact on the environment and to the rubbish we produce.

I often wonder how the exportation of our western lifestyle can be of any benefit to any non-Euro-American societies. It seems to me that in most cases the freight of democracy dead-ends into the politics of imperialism.

Where from and Where to? These are the next questions that I started to raise during this project in Camino Verde. A practical concern, where the rubbish collected in the canal would end up, turned into a metaphorical existential instance that is comparable to the journey of our waste.

While my overall desire is connect and reach out to people, as an artist, I am very concerned and aware of my ethical stands. Does the pretext of art permit free entering/exiting into any terrain? Are artists the new missionaries or is art the new artists’ “green card”? Can art fill in the fallacies of our western society? Are we empowering people by taking away their right and role of social “converters” by making them dependent from other systems and stripping them off their creative and time management autonomy?

I was able to only partly resolve my involvement into this assigned project by shifting the lens back at our western society: a society desperately in need of help and definitely of more introspection.

It is my belief that by healing our western-society we can stop damaging the world’s natural and social environment. This brings me to my next question: How does western “throw-away” culture affect Camino Verde’s environment?

My project bounced off the words of Alma Teresa Lopez. Alma is an inspirational community leader and a proud single mother actively fighting for the betterment of the community and the future of her children.

In the video work of young Jocelyn I’d like to see the expression of Camino Verde’s future.

It is only with the help of Jocelyn, and the inspirational community leaders, Lupita and Don Polo, that I was able to organize the Canal Clean Up. This was not the first clean up they experienced, I did not introduce anything new to their life, on the contrary it was rather the Community of Camino Verde that humbled me with their graceful and enthusiastic help.

Despite the fact that our individual final aims or needs might differ, we were joined by the same humanitarian effort to create awareness about environmental issues of social justice that burden the future well-being of local communities. In addition I’d like to add that the latter is affected by the relentless course of politics and economics of western consumerist life-style.

Will the process of commodification lead to a global dehumanization of life and culture? I often wonder about that.

Basura (trash) is the second major problem afflicting the community of Camino Verde. It is second to the rising number of single mothers and to gang crime. How are these troublesome issues linked to one another and to the rest of us?

Edited and Polished aims at portraying the messy tight squeeze left between people’s freedom and global social responsibility. During this project theories have often conflicted with feelings. Academia and professionalisation often invaded the true nature of art. Emotions and rules have been trespassing into one another’s realms. In the end is it the need to understand the intrinsic essence of humanity that pushes us through these cluttered corridors: cracks left open by the desire of control or just clogged veins waiting to free themselves from pollution?

Too busy and uninviting, some venture through these passages only to get trapped, others make it all the way to Camino Verde, where in the words of Hector Garcia Esqueda: “there is freedom here” (2).

– (1) Italian saying

– (2) Hector M. Garcia Esqueda, activist and shaman living in the Colonia of Camino Verde

The title, Edited and Polished, points at the waste society produces and at the impact western “progress” inflicts on the environment. Will the process of commodification lead to a global dehumanization of life and culture? I often wonder about that.

Like the rest of the world, Camino Verde too is facing the problem of how rubbish is contaminating its environment and the negative repercussions this is causing to the life of the local community.

Only part of a greater globalized scheme, literally the pollution of Camino Verde’s canal has roots in western life-style. Economic and political power-forces lead progress towards a commodified world. Just like western lifestyles, Camino Verde’s canal too is trapped into a structure that prioritizes dehumanizing capitalist values rather than caring progressive ones. The neglect of the environment is just one of many imminent symptoms of social injustice that the future of Camino Verde is facing.

Where from and Whereto? These are the questions that I started to raise during this project in Camino Verde. A practical concern, where the rubbish collected in the canal would end up, turned into a metaphorical existential instance that is comparable to the journey of our waste.

How to dispose of the leftovers of a global society that thrives on consumerism? This shared struggle seems to be better concealed in some places than others in the attempt to make the problem invisible at people’s expenses whose landscapes are silently invaded by waste and whose lives become polluted by the impositions of western progress.

I often wonder how the exportation of our western lifestyle can be of any benefit to any non-Euro-American societies. It is my belief that only by healing our western-society first, we can stop damaging the world’s natural and social environment.

How does western “throw-away” culture affect Camino Verde’s environment? I was not really able to scientifically answer that question, butto me the rubbish invading Camino Verde’s canal is an imported “alien” that is contaminating the spirit of most of our communities and eventually flows into the mainstream of our precious ecosystem of nature, cultures and human values.

Basura (trash) is the second major problem afflicting the community of Camino Verde1. It is second to the rising number of single mothers and to gang crime. How are these troublesome issues linked to one another and to the rest of us?

The idea of a canal-clean-up bounced, not just off my own observations, but also from the words of Alma Teresa Lopez. Alma is an inspirational community leader and a proud single mother actively fighting for the betterment of the community and the future of her children.

With the help of Jocelyn Jaime Mejia, and other inspirational community leaders like Lupita and Don Polo, I was able to organize the Canal Clean Up. This was not the first clean up they’ve experienced. I did not introduce anything new to their life; on the contrary, it was rather the Community of Camino Verde that humbled me with their graceful and enthusiastic help.

Despite the fact that our individual final aims or needs might differ, we were joined by the same humanitarian effort to create awareness about environmental issues of social justice that burden the future well-being of local communities.

During this project, the overall desire to connect and reach out to people was often overshadowed not just by the lack of time but also mainly by ethical concerns that question my role as a European artist. Can art fill in the fallacies of our western society? Are we empowering people by taking away their right and role of social “converters” by making them dependent on other systems and stripping off their creative and time management autonomy?

I was able to only partly resolve these worries by shifting the lens back at western society: a society desperately in need of help and definitely in need of self reflection.

Finally, Edited and Polished aims at portraying the messy tight squeeze left between people’s freedom and global social responsibility. During this project, theories have often conflicted with my feelings. Academia and “professionalisation” often invaded the true nature of art: creativity and imagination. Emotions and rules have been trespassing into one another’s realms. In the end, is it the need to understand the intrinsic essence of humanity that pushes us through these cluttered corridors? Masses of people press through these clogged veins waiting to free themselves from Western pollution.

Some venture through these narrow passages only to get trapped inside a canal filled with waste, others make it all the way to Camino Verde, where in the words of Hector Garcia Esqueda: “There is freedom here”2.

OTIS 1st year BA students of Lara Hoad’s class’Ban the bag, abolish the bottle: Ways to reduce plastic pollution in our oceans’ are proud to present their final work @ Mittel Art Supplies Store on Lincoln Blvd. In Venice.

The project took place in the Colonia of Camino Verde in Tijuana Mexico.

For this project I have collaborated with Jocelyn Jaime Mejia to organize a Canal Clean Up.

This is her video documentation of the event.

I am also infinitely grateful to Marisol and Apolonio Rodriguez for their great contribution.

This is their video work

It has been a humbling experience. Jocelyn, Marisol, Don Polo and all the rest of the community precious input have helped me out in this project. THANK YOU ALL CAMINO VERDE.

Camino Verde’s Canal-Clean-Up

EDITED AND POLISEHD

Statement

Like the rest of the world, Camino Verde too is facing the problem of how rubbish is contaminating its environment and the negative repercussions this is causing to the life of the local community.

Only part of a greater globalized scheme, the pollution of Camino Verde’s canal has roots in western life-style. Economic and political power-forces lead progress towards a commodified world. Just like western lifestyles, Camino Verde’s canal too is trapped into a structure that prioritizes dehumanizing values rather than caring progressive ones. The neglect of the environment is just one of many imminent symptoms of social injustice that the future of Camino Verde is facing.

How do we dispose of the leftovers of a global society that thrives on consumerism? This shared struggle seems to be better concealed in some places than others in the attempt to make the problem invisible at people’s expenses.

Camino Verde’s Canal-Clean-Up is a crossing that meets at a cultural and human exchange of shared values. It is a joint effort of care and a symbolic act that aims at spreading civic awareness on the importance of local environmental social justice.

To me, the rubbish polluting Camino Verde’s canal is an imported “alien” that is invading the spirit of most of our communities and eventually flows into the mainstream of our precious ecosystem of nature, cultures and human values.

We, people of different beliefs, ideas, backgrounds, and cultures, will meet at the Desarrollo Community Center and start walking up the canal to La Casa De Las Ideas. These two main community landmarks of Camino Verde will provide us with our reference points.

The Canal-Clean-Up is for me a humbling powerful act. To walk and to clean together with our humble tools: gloves and bags. We will be collecting the small plastic rubbish that we’ll encounter on our journey inside the canal.

Our gathering and collection will be celebrated into a final artwork that we will assemble together, again in a simple way.

Our bags filled with plastic rubbish will be piled up on the Desarrollo Community Center’s courtyard and tied with rope to form a temporary sculpture.

The scope of the artwork is to create an image that manifests a visible message hoping to reach out to include the rest of the community of Camino Verde and furthermore echo out of their neighbourhood across the world’s neighbours.

This temporary artwork is intended as a creative celebration of the clean up and invites to reflection and discussion on how we can affect each other communities. I like to think of it as a question mark: an aesthetic sign that marks the end of a question.

All along, the Canal-Clean-up participants are invited to document each other via two disposable cameras that this time will be kept and looked after.

Another important parallel outcome to this project will be the video documentation of the Canal-Clean-Up event by Jocelyn Jaime Mejia. Together with the participants’ photos and the disposable cameras, Jocelyn’s film will be featured in an exposition at the 18th Street Art gallery in Santa Monica, USA. Bits of the canal’s rubbish collection – now deported to their native place of origin – will also be part of the show.

EDITED AND POLISHED on the other side of the line

The title of this installation: Edited and Polished refers to the prevailing agenda of institutions to omit “reality” but embellish facts in an insincere manipulative manner that ultimately is exploitative and not always to the advantage to the social public but rather to the detriment of the greater. The terms Edited and Polished also lend themselves as ironic pointers towards our impact on the environment and to the rubbish we produce.

I often wonder how the exportation of our western lifestyle can be of any benefit to any non-Euro-American societies. It seems to me that in most cases the freight of democracy dead-ends into the politics of imperialism.

Where from and Where to? These are the next questions that I started to raise during this project in Camino Verde. A practical concern, where the rubbish collected in the canal would end up, turned into a metaphorical existential instance that is comparable to the journey of our waste.

While my overall desire is connect and reach out to people, as an artist, I am very concerned and aware of my ethical stands. Does the pretext of art permit free entering/exiting into any terrain? Are artists the new missionaries or is art the new artists’ “green card”? Can art fill in the fallacies of our western society? Are we empowering people by taking away their right and role of social “converters” by making them dependent from other systems and stripping them off their creative and time management autonomy?

I was able to only partly resolve my involvement into this assigned project by shifting the lens back at our western society: a society desperately in need of help.

It is my belief that by healing our western-society we can stop damaging the world’s natural and social environment. This brings me to my next question: How does western “throw-away” culture affect Camino Verde’s environment?

My project bounced off the words of Alma Teresa Lopez. Alma is an inspirational community leader and a proud single mother actively fighting for the betterment of the community and the future of her children.

In the video work of young Jocelyn I’d like to see the expression of Camino Verde’s future.

It is only with the help of Jocelyn, and the inspirational community leaders, Lupita and Don Polo, that I was able to organize the Canal Clean Up. This was not the first clean up they experienced, I did not introduce anything new to their life, on the contrary it was rather the Community of Camino Verde that humbled me with their graceful and enthusiastic help.

Despite the fact that our individual final aims or needs might differ, we were joined by the same humanitarian effort to create awareness about environmental issues of social justice that burden the future well-being of local communities.

In addition I’d like to add that the latter is affected by the relentless course of politics and economics of western consumerist life-style.

Will the process of commodification lead to a global dehumanization of life and culture? I often wonder about that.

Basura (trash) is the second major problem afflicting the community of Camino Verde. It is second to the rising number of single mothers and to gang crime. How are these troublesome issues linked to one another and to the rest of us?

Edited and Polished aims at portraying the messy tight squeeze left between people’s freedom and global social responsibility. During this project theories have often conflicted with feelings. Academia and professionalisation often invaded the true nature of art. Emotions and rules have been trespassing into one another’s realms. In the end is it the need to understand the intrinsic essence of humanity that pushes us through these cluttered corridors: cracks left open by the desire of control or just clogged veins waiting to free themselves from pollution?

Too busy and uninviting, some venture through these passages only to get trapped, others make it all the way to Camino Verde, where in the words of Hector Garcia Esqueda: “there is freedom here”.

In the context of our exhibition: ”Race for Water – Preserving water” we are pleased, to invite you to a round table followed by a lunch buffet to be held on Thursday 5 December 2013from 11:30 to 13:30 at “Quartier Libre SIG”, Pont de la Machine in Geneva, on the theme: “Plastic pollution in water – what solutions?”

This roundtable will bring together professional actors on the subject, an opportunity to share and work together on water pollution.

Hong Kong 2013

1000 Hong Kong kids, teachers, and volunteers call for shark conservation by forming a giant shark with a severed fin saying ‘Save Me’ in Chinese (救我). The children then re-attached the fin, dotted the eye, ‘rekindling its spirit,’ and brought the shark back to life as the message of the 2nd annual ‘Kids Ocean Day’ Hong Kong organized by Ocean Recovery Alliance (a Hong Kong and California registered NGO), Malibu Foundation, and Spectral Q from Los Angeles).

The image is based on original drawings from two Hong Kong schoolchildren, one depicting a shark asking for a ‘ban on shark fin soup,’ and the other with a severed fin which said ‘save me’ while building respect for an endangered species that sadly, is universally feared. Their drawings were converted to a large scale aerial art image on the beach by international artist John Quigley, with help from all of the children, but with the fins from children at the Confucian Tai Shing Primary School, and Renaissance College primary students.

‘Ni Chana ni Juana’ is an expression used in Mexico to speak about a condition or situation defined by a lack of resolution: not one or the other, neither here nor there. The exhibition Ni Chana Ti-Juana, opening on November 16 at 18th Street Arts Center, takes this platitude as a conceptual point of departure. Ni Chana Ti-Juana will present work produced during the first-year project in the Otis Graduate Public Practice Program after three trips to Camino Verde, a community in Tijuana B.C.

The projects being presented are at once diverse and similar, individual and collective, each developed in relation to issues, concerns and methodological approaches selected by individual artists, but linked by a shared belief in the ability of small-scale moments of relation to activate a shared human experience that can transcend physical and psychological borders.

The research projects have been facilitated by Bill Kelley Jr. and Cog•nate Collective, with the assistance of Polen Audiovisual and in collaboration with Centro Comunitario Camino Verde, Casa de las Ideas, and community organizers Don Polo, Alma López, and Tico Orozco.

An opening reception for Ni Chana Ti-Juana will be held on November 16 from 6-9pm. The exhibition will be open through December, culminating in a conversation at the Otis Graduate Public Practice studios on December 7 at 12pm.

Artist Bios:

Víctor Albarracín is a former artist, a former writer and a former educator and rock band member. Currently he’s just a student struggling with his language limitations.

Claudia Borgna graduated in fine arts from the London Metropolitan University, UK. She has been attending several fellowship artists’ residencies and exhibiting her work internationally as well as being awarded the Pollock-Krasner Grant and the Royal British Society of Sculptor Award. With special guest Jocelyn Jaime Mejia. Jocelyn is an 18 year old aspiring video maker currently studying Communication Science and living in the Colonia of Camino Verde.

Noé Gaytán is an artist, writer, and curator. His art deals with public space, urbanism, art history, and the idea of art itself. He writes art reviews of contemporary art in Los Angeles on Platinum Cheese. Since 2012 he has been curator of Nomad Art Project.

Tonya Ingram is a New York University alumna, a Cincinnati native, a Bronx-bred introvert and the author of Growl and Snare. Her poetry has traveled to Ghana, California, Michigan, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., New York, The Literary Bohemian, and Youtube.

Carol Zou is a compulsive collectivizer and guerilla knitter. She co-organizes the public fiber art collective, Yarn Bombing Los Angeles, whose participatory knit projects engage issues of public/private space, women’s work, wish fulfillment, how to exist in an informal capacity vis a vis the institution, and most recently, gentrification.

Mario Mesquita is an advocate, educator, organizer, and artist. His work explores social constructs of relationships between the personal and community sphere. Formally trained in graphic arts at the University of Oregon, his art encompasses the graphical to the situational, the printed to the curated celebrated event. As a native Oregonian and recent transplant to Los Angeles, his most recent challenge has been getting used to the Southern Californian sun.

Estephany Campos is an artist/mentor born and raised in the heart of South Central Los Angeles. Raised under traditional Mexican-American values, her practice consists of staged photography/mixed media intended to capture ideas about women’s trials in life. She graduated from the University of California Riverside with a BA in Studio Art and is now pursuing her MFA in Fine Arts Public Practice at the Otis School of Art and Design. Influenced by her family’s history of community involvement; Campos is interested in bringing art to the masses and raising questions about the art community’s exclusivity.